Past Games: Driver San Francisco

Driver San Francisco was released on PS3, Wii, Xbox 360, Windows, and Mac OS X systems between September 2011 and March 2012. Driver San Francisco is an awesome action driving game telling the story of Tanner like you've never seen before.

Gameplay consists of driving over 125 fully damageable vehicles while using Tanner's special Shift ability, allowing him to shift between drivers and vehicles. There is no on foot gameplay in this game and neither can you use firearms like you could in Driver 3. Shift will allow players to play as other characters in different missions apart from the story mode. I like how you can shift between different vehicles as it breaks the limits of racing gameplay in doing other activities such as police chases playing as either a fleeing suspect or a police officer. You can change cars by either shifting to another car or going to a safehouse to switch cars purchased through a point system. You will earn points for doing certain tasks and stunts. Using shift also gives you creative abilities such as using another vehicle as a battering ram/roadblock to stop a fleeing suspect without remaining in the police car. Shift ability is very creative as no other game before it has mastered it like Driver: San Francisco. Open World automobile gameplay never had this original concept.

Story here is Jericho escapes from a prison van and Tanner and his partner chase him. Tanner is accidentally slammed T-Bone style by an 18 wheeler, putting Tanner in a coma. Tanner then gains his ability to shift into other driver's minds, making Tanner a supernatural mindjacker. The setting is the vast city of San Francisco and San Francisco in this game looks so real. You can't tell it apart from real cities. I do feel that the story in this game is short. However there are side objectives, some of which need to have completion to advance through the main story and the side missions are non-linear.

Graphics look stunning and amazing as they capture you by surprise in how real everything is. 60 frames per second is the best framerate any game can have and Driver San Francisco doesn't fall flat on this, not even by 1 frame. The vehicles look even crisper than real life and have a great touching charm to them as you will want to get your hands on these in the game. Is there anything much else I can say? All I can say now is Driver San Francisco has the highest graphical quality of any game for it's time and ports.

The Wii version of the game is very different and this review only covers the Xbox 360, PS3, PC, and OS X platforms. PC and OS X platforms will differ depending on your computer.

Final verdict for this masterpiece game is a 9/10.
+Unique and Fascinating Vehicle Gameplay
+Cutting Edge Graphics
+Variety of Awesome Real Licensed Cars
+Good Characters
-Story Feels Short